Friday, March 28, 2008

Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together!

Those of you that have been patiently ticking off days on the calendar waiting when you could get your hands on Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together by Larissa Brown and Martin Brown, your long wait is over. Sound the trumpets!Most of you know Larissa from her blog, Stitch Marker, and for the hat that changed the world--the Meathead. And you are no doubt well acquainted with her many clever scarf patterns, like the Mabel scarf, the Cream of Spinach scarf, and of course, the Pop scarf. Well now you can add one more scarf to the Pantheon of Fabulous Scarves chez Stitch Marker: the Traveling scarf !Back in January, Larissa offered me the chance to organize a knitalong for the Traveling scarf pattern. Because the scarf is made of Koigu (sock yarn for non-sock purposes? Hell to the YES) and knit in panels by multiple knitters (totally down with the daisy chain thing), I was thrilled at the opportunity.So Mike Wade (he of Y Knit fame), Babs (aka Purlfriend, my best pal ever and reason for not blowing my brains out in this town of ours), Mike's friend (never met him but thanks for the pinch hit knitting!) and I sent this baby back and forth between California and Pennsylvania until we had an 8 foot long scarf. Yowzers!The SpecsPattern: The Traveling Scarf : The California-Pennsy Version!Yarn: Koigu KPPPM (8 different colors: 803, 531, 111, 433, 216, 318, 213, 419)Needles: Size 7Mods: None.Originally our pal Kenric (who you might recall picked up knitting less than a year ago and is now doing entrelac. Entrelac!) was going to do this with us, but he had a terrible family loss and understandably couldn't participate. So we are sending this to you, Kenric, and hope that it keeps you warm and reminds you how much your friends love you.

Wonderful scarf! One of the State College knitters/spinners just started a ravelry group to do knit-alongs from this Larissa's book, called "knitalong campaign". If you're a joiner you should come join us!

Love everything about this scarf, the pattern, the colours, the fact that it travels between friends, and especially the thought that it will bring warmth and comfort to Kenric (sorry to hear about his loss).